


knockin' on heaven's door

by jadedpearl



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, bachelor in paradise ie secondhand straight nonsense, i am silly....i know this, is this funny or serious i genuinely don't know, minor references to past substance abuse problems, tv watching as a love language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28424754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadedpearl/pseuds/jadedpearl
Summary: Bev got Eddie into Bachelor in Paradise the summer after they killed It. The first week, he’d gone into it completely blind, skeptical and confused. By the third week, he’d switched from watching it exclusively on Hulu premium, for which he paid 12.99 a month, to watching it on TV as it came out, infuriating commercial breaks and all; the reason being that he didn’t want to wait the extra day for the streaming platform to catch up.This is bullshit,he’d text Bev.Why the fuck isn't there a rose ceremony at the end of the episode?...Eddie is given a secret, an HBO password, and a vacation.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 26
Kudos: 118





	knockin' on heaven's door

**Author's Note:**

> the way bachelor in paradise gives you brain rot literally cannot be conveyed unless you've watched it i don't know what to tell you.

Bev got Eddie into Bachelor in Paradise the summer after they killed It. The first week, he’d gone into it completely blind, skeptical and confused. By the third week, he’d switched from watching it exclusively on Hulu premium, for which he paid 12.99 a month, to watching it on TV as it came out, infuriating commercial breaks and all; the reason being that he didn’t want to wait the extra day for the streaming platform to catch up. 

_This is bullshit,_ he’d text Bev. _Why the fuck isn’t there a rose ceremony at the end of the episode?_

Eddie was living alone at this point. His divorce, though emotionally harrowing enough, seemed tame compared to Bev’s, which was thoroughly “reported” on by interested parties (TMZ and Daily Mail being the top two contenders), and required several different types of lawyers to make sure that Tom was put about as low in the dirt as possible, without being literally six feet under. It might have been quicker or easier if Bev didn’t want him out of her house, company, and life with absolutely nothing to his name, but Bev was Bev. There were times Eddie considered rearranging Tom’s finances himself somehow, just to get him to file for bankruptcy and save Bev from the mess. As it was, he approved of her drive to leave him destitute, and supported her the best he could with phone calls, late night charcuterie boards, and the occasional midnight movie at a tiny theater in the Upper East side that only showed weird foreign films or festival releases that hadn’t yet made it to streaming. 

Bev was cultured in a way that Eddie found overwhelming, at times. She kept up with movie releases; had her finger on the pulse of whatever new forms of music were emerging in the city. She was constantly sending Eddie Ted Talks with her own notes on them via text. Eddie would have wondered how she did it all if most of her messages weren’t time stamped from between the hours of eleven at night and four in the morning – she clearly had some insomniac tendencies. If Eddie had to speculate, and he did, it probably had something to do with the years and years of horrific nightmares that she’d been put through. He also privately thought that she was going through a very extended manic episode, and any day now would crash. He only hoped he could be there for her if it happened. Having lived the last ten or so years in some kind of dream state himself, when his heart rate had only become elevated by the way people drove in New York, or the state of office Keurig – that is, usually in rage – he had no idea what to do if it happened. But he did know one thing: the way Bev spoke about art and her relation to it was, in a word, almost totally foreign. 

This was why it was so surprising when, to celebrate the last dying breath of her divorce and the thousands of dollars she’d spent gaining her basic autonomy back, she’d wanted nothing more than to sit on Eddie’s couch, drink a three hundred dollar bottle of Dom Pérignon a buyer had gifted her for New Years, and watch between ten to twenty semi-hot people get drunk on a beach. 

“I don’t get it,” Eddie had said, for about the fourth time in a row. 

“Shhhh,” Bev had said. “Just watch. I’ll tell you who’s who.” 

She’d certainly made a valiant effort, even though everyone looked the same to Eddie. After about thirty five minutes of mixing up one woman with long, honey blonde hair after another, Eddie turned to Bev and said, “Is it weird that this show is like, really horny, but still has super strong Christian undertones?” 

“Oh, definitely,” Bev said. “I will be the first to tell you that this whole franchise is super weird.” Eddie had never, not for a moment, considered it _not_ to be weird, but she continued: “I actually think it’s the perfect, like, diorama of the American media dilemma.” And then she launched into a spiel that was one degree too articulate for Eddie, something about the clash between the commodification of sex and the neo-Puritanical culture that was the United States today, and the inherent tension of forcing a bunch of monogamous people to non-monogamously date, right in front of each other, for ten or so weeks. So, there was that. 

Richie, of course, found the entire thing to be wildly hilarious, and told Eddie so every opportunity he got. These opportunities were only rising in frequency, of course, because if Richie got Eddie on the phone once, Eddie had to have it again, and soon. Richie had that effect on him, and Eddie almost couldn’t stand it. The part of him that could, however, kept track of the clock, so that he could call Richie when it would make sense for both of their time zones. 

Richie did not extend the same courtesy. That was to say, he called Eddie at almost all hours of the day, even when and especially if he was at work. Eddie would pick up every time and hate himself a little for it, but nonetheless he would answer. Perhaps it was that he viewed something about those phone calls as a precious commodity, one that could slip through his fingers if he let it. He understood things about the stock market, about finances, insurance; this was something like that in his head: sought after, valuable from one moment to the next in a way that he could try to predict, but would ultimately rear its head in ways Eddie didn’t foresee. Or maybe that it was that he liked Richie a lot, too much even, in a way that he probably could pin down but was certainly avoiding. 

“I’ve never been so confused as to what women find attractive,” Eddie confessed on one of these phone calls, squinting but not really seeing the spreadsheet open on his computer in front of him. He had a call with another team leader in twelve minutes, and was keeping an eye on the clock. “Some guy will come down the beach, and everyone’s freaking out, even though he looks like the same six out of ten douchebag I’ve seen a thousand times at the gym.” 

“Aw, Eds,” Richie cooed. “Don’t worry. You’re not like those six out of ten douchebag gym rats. You’re a ten out of ten douchebag gym rat. I’m sure there’s a gal for you out there.”

“Fuck off. And that’s another thing – everyone insists on calling grown women ‘girls.’ _She’s a great girl._ It makes me fucking crazy.” 

“Sounds like I’m ready to be on show.” 

Eddie gripped a pencil on his desk and felt every groove of it press into his palm. “You’re so fucking funny, dickwad.”

“So kind of you to say!” 

“I was kidding. Obviously. This is why I shouldn’t tell you things,” Eddie groused, wishing that he could, in fact, not tell Richie things. Instead, whenever they talked he felt compelled to open his mouth and share the most inane shit he could think of. Like his newfound embarrassing reality TV habits.

Richie laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re the only person I could trust to watch this show,” he said gleefully, a couple thousand miles and three timezones away. “You’re the perfect intersection of judgmental and out of touch.”

Eddie caught his eyebrows lowering in a reflective patch of his computer screen. He knew he was judgmental (it was true, so why deny it) but he wasn’t sure that he was out of touch. In truth, he hadn’t had to think about it until a few months ago, when he started talking to Richie again, who prided himself on being ‘in touch.’ The work that went into maintaining this particular skill, as Eddie understood it, was having a Twitter account and checking it regularly. This, he wouldn’t do, not even if he was dared, not even if he was in a gun-to-your-head scenario. “You don’t trust Bev?” he said instead. 

“Ehhh, she’s toeing the line. It reeks of straight activity, but…” 

Eddie grunted. “Sounds like you’re dangerously close to speculating something.” 

Richie made a noise of feigned shock, a sort of _Who, me?_ Eddie couldn’t see him (there was something about FaceTime that felt too intimate, at least to him, and Richie had never suggested it in all their phone calls) but he knew that Richie had a hand over his heart, or up, palm out, as if to swear on the Bible, or high five the air. Eddie knew this because it was what he had always done as a kid. And then last summer he’d done it a few times, whenever Mike or Ben or Bill had said something particularly and nauseatingly earnest, and subsequently mocked them. At the time, Eddie had had to tamp down the vindication that Richie would have a similar body language to what he had as a kid, especially when so much else about him had changed. “Me? Never!” 

“Well,” Eddie said, “Don’t hurt yourself.” 

The topic of Bev’s sexuality was something that Eddie himself hadn’t wasted any time thinking about. First, and most importantly it was none of his business. Secondly, it was pretty clear to Eddie that Bev had something going on with Ben, even if that something was tenuous and delicate and more or less on hold for now. Anything beyond that hadn’t been brought up or made clear to Eddie, and he was more than happy with that arrangement. It was more than enough to try and be a good friend to her, without spending his limited free time trying to keep up with her love life. Especially when he was now tasked with the love lives of this season’s contestants of Bachelor in Paradise. 

What was more interesting to Eddie was Richie’s mention of the subject in the first place. Since he’d come out a few months ago (over Twitter, of course – Richie and Twitter were a duo that Eddie thought maybe should be separated, but the task itself seemed daunting and possibly harmful, like separating Siamese twins conjoined at the head) he’d adopted an air of nonchalance about the whole thing. Or rather, Eddie thought he was probably projecting an air of nonchalance. But then again, the only thing that would be more surprising than Richie coming out of the closet at forty one and launching right into gay jokes, would be Richie coming out of the closet at forty one and quietly moving on with his life, in a well adjusted and mature sense. It had never been like him to let someone beat him to the punch. 

The problem, Eddie thought, frowning ever harder at his computer, was that Richie thought he needed to make fun of himself before someone else could in the first place. Not that people weren’t cruel and horrible elsewhere (this was the primary reason why Eddie couldn’t have a Twitter, especially when a Google alert for ‘Tozier’ was more than enough to scratch the itch). Eddie knew that habits were hard to kill, but Richie acted sometimes like one of their friends was going to have a ‘gotcha’ moment with him, and stand up on a table and point and laugh. 

“The only time I hurt myself,” Richie said, “Is when I’m trying to keep up with your mom.” 

“Did you find yourself making ‘your mom’ jokes in the 27 years, and wonder where the fuck they came from?” asked Eddie, mostly to be an ass, but also curious, in the way he was curious about anything Richie had done from ages fifteen to thirty nine. 

Richie laughed once again in a burst. It jolted Eddie, like water hitting a stove top when it boiled over. “If you can believe it, no one’s ever questioned it.” 

That night (it was a Monday) Eddie reclined on his couch with a glass of white wine and sat in front of the TV as the grating and infuriatingly catchy theme – _Almost paradise - we’re knockin’ on heaven’s door!_ – wailed out of his speakers. The couch was white leather and had come with the apartment, and Eddie hated it. On paper he should have liked it: it couldn’t hide stains, ergo foreign contaminants couldn’t hide from him; it was leather, and easy to clean and wipe down if there was a spill. 

Unfortunately – and this was a part of himself that Eddie was still reckoning with – he didn’t want those things anymore: clean and easy and every past mistake visible. The leather was cold in the winter and stuck to his skin now, sticky from the sweat on his thighs where they were exposed from his boxers, in late July with a broken AC unit that couldn’t be fixed until morning. Bev had been steadily sending him links to less practical, fanciful type love-seats for months, and they were growing on him. A green velvet two-seater was just about the most impractical thing Eddie could spend money on, but he wanted it anyway. And the real problem was that when he wanted something, he wanted it like he thought he needed it. 

He told himself that he was waiting for his bonus, or a promotion. Not that a couch was far out of his budget – it wasn’t even a little out of his budget. He was just worried that if he got ahead of himself, it’d be like he couldn’t stop, and then he’d be living in the same one bedroom in Greenwich, not with white walls and a white couch and white appliances, but with William Morris wallpaper and an impossible-to-clean couch that Richie would surely spill something all over if he ever came to visit. 

Not that he had, of course, and this also felt safer to Eddie the way his current couch did. The truth being, of course, that Eddie wanted Richie like that, like he couldn’t stop if he started. Of course he did. It had taken a little while to recognize it, and in fact he hadn’t recognized it at all until he had started doing things for himself. He hadn’t been thinking about anything until he’d left Myra, really. And then he’d leased the apartment, and he’d started thinking of where Richie must live, and what it was like. And if it was big or cold or messy (it was probably messy). And then he’d gone to the doctors and had an allergy skin test, and his back had stung but in the end it had only been wheatgrass that he’d been allergic to, which might have been incapacitating in LA, where Richie was, but as it was was only mildly inconvenient in New York and meant that he couldn’t eat some Thai foods. And he’d wondered if Richie liked Thai, and maybe it could be an indicator of their fated incompatibility if he did, if he couldn’t get enough of it. And then he’d let Bev take him out to brunch, and tried all of the things he thought he couldn’t eat before the allergy test, and he’d thought about going with Richie to the deli he’d started frequenting, and if so, what sandwich Richie would order, or if he’d just get latkes and make a mess of the sour cream and applesauce. 

So, that was what it was, in all of its idiocy. It didn’t help that Eddie was now entangled in this whole reality TV shit; that he now had several glaring examples of poor behavior and worse communication in relationships where people jumped into things too fast and got their feelings hurt. All of the language of Bachelor Nation (god, he _hated_ the things Bev talked him into, sometimes) swirled around in his head as he stared dully at the TV: things like _connections_ and _breath of fresh air_ and _really falling for him_ , and all of the bullshit that these people came up with as a shared lexicon and passed back and forth until it was almost normal to Eddie.

But, and this was key, Eddie was alone in New York tonight, Bev at a late night business meeting with a buyer in Japan, so he kept watching, only sipping his wine when he wasn’t yelling at the TV and feeling like a moron for doing so. 

+

That first night in Derry, Eddie had existed on a level that was something akin half drunk, half high; weighed down and floating at the same time. The weather had started out too warm for his jacket; then, all of a sudden, it had been too cold as the temperature that had held all that evening dropped, right around the time they learned what had happened to Stanley.

He had been already on the way to drunk, for real, but had sobered when the air and the news and half of the travel sized bottle of water that he had had in his jacket pocket hit. (The water bottle was from the plane; he preferred it to an open cup that could be contaminated or spilled.) But he had stumbled slightly through the parking lot anyway, riding out a panic attack and too much information, all at once. Richie on the other hand, had kept himself upright through yelling at Mike and offering Eddie a ride home. A block away from the Jade of the Orient, however, Eddie made him pull over so that they could switch drivers. He’d shoved what was left of the water bottle into Richie’s hands, made sure his seatbelt was buckled, and navigated them back to the Townhouse with ease – how, he didn’t know, but the streets had unfolded in front of him despite the fact that the Jade of the Orient hadn’t even been standing the last time he was in Derry. 

He had forced Richie to switch drivers because it became very clear to Eddie that he was sloshed. Even in a town as earily empty as Derry was that night, it was the obvious choice to Eddie, full of statistics and insurance horror stories, and knowing full well that the Mustang was a rental and would fuck up Richie’s rates if they got into a wreck. Because of the scene (an evil town that had tried to have them and all those they loved killed, multiple times) and the players (Richie and Eddie) Eddie knew that it could and would happen. In truth, neither of them should have been driving, but Eddie got the feeling that while Richie could probably walk in a straight line if asked, it was only because he had gotten very good at doing so with years of practice. 

At first they had been silent, and then Eddie was the one who broke first, babbling about everything: Mike, the lying, the phone call, his wrecked car, and the blood in the fish tank, which he had caught sight of right before an evil, winged fortune cookie had tried to kill him. More than the fortune cookie, he thought that he’d remember that skull, bobbing right beside the blue type of fish from Finding Nemo. He’d caught sight of it when Richie had started calling his name frantically; Richie and Mike had been standing in front of the fish tank. 

“I don’t think I can handle this, man,” Richie had said in return, in a way that felt uncharacteristically (to Eddie, at least) sincere and open. He’d never been the type to really say how he was feeling besides _fucking awesome, man, and awesome at fucking your mom._ He wasn’t slurring his words (again, Eddie thought this had something to do with practice). “I was perfectly fine not remembering all of this shit.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie said quickly, which, even at the time, he knew to be a bit of a fib, if not an outright lie. “Yeah, me too.”

“I mean, Jesus – the red eye and the drive up were murder already,” he said. “Now I’m gonna actually _get murdered._ ” 

Eddie was already feeling his throat tighten. “Not if we get the fuck out of here,” he said, his grip on the gear shift flexing. For some reason, Richie had rented a manual instead of an automatic. This stood out because in Eddie’s memory, Richie had been terrible at driving at all, much less comfortable enough to drive an unfamiliar car with a stick shift. But he supposed that a lot could change in almost thirty years. 

“Right,” Richie said, and then, with no preamble or apparent catalyst: “You know, I used to have a pretty big crush on you, when we were kids.” After this, he laughed loudly. “I wouldn’t have told you that but we’re either gonna die or forget again, so, fuck it.” 

The laughter was loud and made Eddie jump, and then he processed what Richie had said and turned a little too sharply onto Main Street without signaling. 

“Oh,” Eddie said, because it was all he could think of to say. He could see the headlights of Ben’s rental ahead of them on the road, and he could almost make out the license plate from here. But then, they got caught at a red, and it sped away from them. 

Eddie thought of himself as a child: he had been loud and very often annoying and said the wrong thing a lot. He certainly hadn’t been someone that could be considered “nice”. Eddie tried not to fault himself for this; at least, he tried now, as he had never given any thought to himself as a child before tonight. He also knew that he was visibly thrown, and he didn’t want to be, didn’t want Richie to see it and feel bad about it. It had been a long time ago; he reasoned that it didn’t mean anything now besides the fact that Richie would tell him at all. 

As the light had turned green, Richie had cleared his throat and taken off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes in a way that suggested that he was tired from more than just the flight and the drive and the alcohol.

“Is it weird that I said that?” He had said, peeking at Eddie through his hand. “I hope I didn’t make it weird.” 

Eddie tried his best not to tighten his grip on the steering wheel, lest Richie notice. “No,” he said, hoping that Richie wouldn’t remember this in the morning. He coughed slightly. “No,” he said again, “it’s actually um, flattering?” He chanced a glance over at Richie, whose hand had lowered somewhat. 

It hadn’t been a lie. Eddie had never thought of himself in that way, and the idea that Richie could like him and want him, back when he didn’t know anything about putting on airs for another in order to gain their romantic affection, settled somewhere as a warmth in his left rib cage, right under his heart. Of course, there was his wife, back home in Long Island and still calling him even now; there was also the situation at hand, and the numbness that had been spreading through him ever since he’d learned that Stan was dead, which was sure to hit as something more concrete when he got a chance to think of it – but still. The thought that he’d been nothing but himself around Richie for as long as he’d known him all those years ago, and still been worthy of that kind of thing, could be a source of comfort in this moment. 

“Okay,” Richie had sighed, and then again, “Okay.” 

At that moment, and, Eddie thought, to both of their relief, they pulled up to the Townhouse. Then Eddie had leaned across to unbuckle his seatbelt, and they both got out of the car and went into the house, where they learned that actually, Bev had some news to share that would conveniently tip everything else from his mind, except for Mike’s exceedingly helpful description of their trauma as a _viral infection_ that had been festering for twenty seven years. And if Richie’s reveal of a middle school infatuation had gotten lost in the shuffle, well, maybe it was better that way, even when it turned out that they hadn’t died, and they wouldn’t forget. 

+

Around the middle of August, Bill came to town to attend the New York premier of a TV series he’d done some writing on. _Attic Room_ had come out that spring to favorable reviews, all of them noting the decent ending, at least in comparison to the book and the adaption of _Black Rapids_ that had come out in 2014. Also, Bill had specifically written the pilot for the TV show, and co-written the episode after that, and it was generally agreed upon that as bad as his endings were, beginnings were one of his particular strengths.

It wasn’t normal for one writer on a team for a TV show to walk the red carpet of a premier, but Bill unfortunately remained somewhat of a literary celebrity. He had already been something of an ‘East Coast darling’, but being married to a famous actress had helped to boost him from the fringes of fame to a household name – even if households also knew that his and Audra’s marriage was somewhat publicly on the rocks. There hadn’t been an ‘conscious-uncoupling’ Instagram announcement yet, but people knew it was coming, especially after Audra had been spotted zooming around on the back of a co-star’s vespa somewhere in Italy like she was Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. 

How Bill felt about this was hard to tell, especially because he was exactly the type to put on a brave face and pretend that everything was fine. Eddie could have privately thought that this might be why his and Audra’s marriage was hanging by a thread in the first place; _could_ have, if he didn’t live in a glass house himself, with no room to be trading stones. 

Bev, on the other hand, hypothesized about it to Eddie often, in a way that even Eddie at times found just to the left to borderline cold. Whereas Eddie and Bev had had each other to bitch with about lawyers and no-fault and prenups, Bill was on the other side of the country with no one but Richie to get brunch with – who was a good friend, Eddie thought, but hadn’t been through a divorce. It wasn’t surprising, in that sense, that the members of their group fell into different camps of confidentiality: Bev and Eddie on the East Coast, Richie and Bill on the West Coast, and Mike and Ben in the catch all group that was left.. At least, that’s what Eddie figured. Surely Richie and Bill were talking about their feelings with _someone,_ and Richie certainly didn’t tell Eddie how he really felt about his life unless he was drunk, and even then, he was mostly joking to take some of the sting off of it. Besides, Richie and Bill had always been close as kids, especially before all of the clown shit started.

Eddie had tried to ask Bev about Bill and whatever had been going on between them at some point. What he knew already was vague: there’d been some infatuation when they were kids, and a few points of energy between them last summer. Beyond that, he’d enacted a very need to know policy. But then, of course, the whole Richie situation began to fester inside of him, and Bill and Bev’s childhood feelings for each other suddenly seemed very important. 

Eddie chose to ask her on a particularly bad day, dirovce wise, one in which she had been venting and talking about herself for a few hours. Eddie was fine with the venting, in a supportive sense. He also thought that it was unlikely that she would see the connection of Eddie of all people asking the question in the first place. He wasn’t proud of this exactly, but through the worst of it Bev had had no choice but to be self absorbed to get through it, and Eddie thought it would be okay to leverage it slightly. 

It had worked. Bev was half drunk on an extremely overpriced dry red that was somehow still packaged in a box, meaning that Eddie hated it in every sense of the word. She went on at length about how of course she loved Bill now, and remembered being _in_ love with him for a time when they were kids, but that she just didn’t, and couldn’t feel that way anymore. They had hooked up in Derry – which Eddie hadn’t known, and kind of wished that he was still in the dark about – but that was it. They hadn’t really talked about it, but she knew that Bill had gotten the hint when she and Ben were having their moment at the quarry. 

“I mean,” she’d said, the TV paused on Dean, frozen in the middle of a confessional, “It was a million years ago, for starters. Derry was fucking crazy, I barely even count that. But middle school was so long ago. I wish we’d never even kicked it back up again, but I guess my therapist is getting her bills paid, so whatever.” 

This did not comfort Eddie. It also wasn’t even remotely in the ballpark of what he wanted to hear, at least in relation to why he had been asking at all: that was, to get a gage on what Richie might be feeling now, or at least what he felt about his feelings back then. Weary regret was really not what he had been hoping for. But then, he had thought that maybe it wasn’t so bad: a kind of wry, bemused fondness, cut through with _what was I thinking_. At the very least, Richie’s therapist’s bills would be getting paid, too. 

“Plus,” Bev was continuing, “It’s like that porcupine thing.” Eddie had given her a blank stare, and she took a moment to squint up at the ceiling of her Astoria loft. “No, wait, that hedgehog thing. You know,” she said, and when Eddie shook his head, kept going. “Like, we’re too spiny for each other. We’d never let each other in, we’d just poke one another to death. The Hedgehog’s dilemma,” she finished, and then drained her glass. “I’d piss on Freud’s grave, but some of the shit he said just made sense.” Then she unpaused the TV. 

So, basically: she wasn’t interested in Bill like that, and in fact was planning on establishing some boundaries with him so that they could continue on with their lives as close friends, the way Bev wanted. Eddie thought that this was all well and good, but completely unhelpful. 

Eddie assumed that Ben wasn’t a hedgehog. He knew that he himself was, that was for sure. But then, what was the solution to this? A hedgehog would poke pretty much about any animal. 

Bill’s coming to town was good for two reasons: one, because Eddie missed him, and two, because he’d be able to take a stab at having the same conversation that he’d had with Bev, but in person, which was much more likely to garner better results than if they did it over the phone. This was why, when Bill had told Eddie that he’d be in New York and would like to get drinks, Eddie had offered his apartment for Bill to crash at. He did this as a good faith offering, while thinking fully that Bill already had a hotel booked and close to the premier, and would politely decline. Instead, he responded with an enthusiastic _That’d be great! =)_

Intentional or not, the use of the equal sign for the smiley face somehow made it so much more threatening than a regular colon would have. So Eddie texted back a thumbs up emoji and went to make sure that he had clean sheets in his linen cabinet. Maybe Bill was a little lonely, after all, because he’d certainly seen pictures of Eddie’s apartment and knew that all he had to offer was the white leather couch. That, or he had a great back and could handle a night on it. 

Bill flew in on a Friday, so Eddie took the day off and made the drive out to Jersey to pick him up, which he hated doing but could at least respect the impulse to avoid La Guardia or JFK. Newark wasn’t much better, but Eddie despised all of the airports in the city with a passion. Airports in general were bad; New York airports were akin to Satan’s asshole. If he could drive or take the train everywhere he would, but as it was he was often sent to conferences in places like Denver or Houston, in which case he begrudgingly sucked it up and became one of the thousands of business men a day traveling in first class and staring bitchily at the headrest straight ahead. 

The first thing they did after leaving the airport was stop for sliders near Eddie’s parking garage. Before, Eddie had hated sliders; rather, he had hated anything you ate with your hands. Now, he appreciated them well enough, but went through a pile of napkins, wiping his hands every time he set his food down to take a sip of water because he just couldn’t stand the grease on his fingers. When they were done, Eddie slid his basket, spearhead pickle untouched in it, over to Bill after he’d thrown it one too many considering glances. Bill ate it with gusto and said, “Richie and I would be more compatible if he didn’t like pickles. Half the time I FaceTime him, he’s digging around his fridge at 4pm for a late lunch of dill spearheads and salt and pepper chips. I s-swear, he only eats crunchy foods.” 

Eddie managed (gracefully, in his opinion) to tsk judgmentally at Richie’s eating habits while cataloguing several different things at once: the fact that Richie and Bill FaceTimed; Bill’s use of the word _compatible_ ; and, stupidly, the jealous thought that he and Richie would be perfect lunch partners. Eddie hated sour food, and he hated bread-and-butter pickles even more. Back in his apartment, quietly trying doing work in his room while Bill napped on the couch, Eddie thought and thought about lunches and Richie and airports and the fact that maybe Richie would come to New York for a film premier or a show some day. He was out in Atlanta right now, filming some movie that he seemed excited about, and not just for the paycheck. Of course, Patty was out in Atlanta, and Richie had also talked about seeing her. Eddie was afraid to reach out, but was more afraid still to go his whole life without knowing a thing about Stanley as an adult, or his life with his wife. So he was glad that Richie was getting his foot in the door. 

The fact that Richie had stepped back from stand-up didn’t surprise Eddie as much as the fact that he mostly did kids movies, either for voice over work or writing or just plain acting. Considering the fact that the last time they’d talked about children had either been Richie complaining about the tweens at the bowling alley where he worked when he was sixteen, or the literal child murders that were taking place in their town, it was fair that his disposition had changed. But still. It had caught Eddie off guard.

Clicking through his junk mail (mostly email after email from Hulu or The New York Times or even Broadway Direct, for which he was on the mailing list after seeing Falsettos with Bev last fall) Eddie felt briefly guilty for wishing it was Richie who was visiting, asleep on the bed next to his computer desk, and not Bill, asleep on the couch in his living room. Then he mostly just missed Richie. He held out for a few minutes more before quietly stepping out onto the little balcony off of his bedroom and pressing the button to speed dial him, right at the top of the favorites section in his Contacts app. 

“Hey,” he said, when Richie picked up after two rings. 

“Why are you whispering?” Richie whispered back obnoxiously, even though Eddie had really just been talking quietly. 

“Bill’s asleep inside,” Eddie said, at what he was sure was a normal low-volume. 

Richie whistled. “Damn, Kaspbrak. You work fast.”

“I – it’s not – “ Eddie stumbled through his words, infuriatingly flustered in spite of himself. 

“Chill,” Richie said, which, historically, never seemed to do much in the way of getting Eddie to calm down. “I’m just messing with you. You probably don’t need to be quiet anyway, I can hear like a million cars honking from here. And I’m miles away!” He laughed at this, like it was somehow incredibly funny. Richie’s capacity for self-amusement would be annoying if Eddie didn’t find it so endlessly endearing. 

He wasn’t wrong. New York traffic continued four stories below on the street, but Bill was sleeping like a baby. Eddie supposed he was just one of those people who could fall asleep easily. That, or he had taken a Klonopin to knock himself out. Still, it felt strange to be awake when he was asleep. When they were kids, Bill had always fallen asleep last, like he was watching over them or something. Of course, Eddie had always nodded off first, or close to first, and then woken up in the morning with dicks on his face that he would have to frantically scrub at before going down to breakfast. Fortunately, Richie almost always used washable markers, but it didn’t stop Eddie from attacking him with a ferocity that everyone was used to, but would hastily get out of the way for anyway. 

“He’s in town for that thing?” Richie was asking. Eddie didn’t bother being a dick and asking him to clarify, just nodded instead. Then he realized that Richie couldn’t hear him. He found himself doing this at times; grinning wordlessly or shaking his fist at the air, and then he’d catch himself being an idiot in Bryant Park and have to hope that no one had seen. 

“I wish he’d written me into that,” Richie said wistfully, after Eddie had verbally clarified that yes, Bill was in town so that Eddie could chauffeur him around to various sandwich shops and also the premier of his hit TV show. “I asked him to but I don’t think it got cleared.” 

“I didn’t know you wanted that,” Eddie said, leaning on the railing to look down at the streets of Manhattan and trying not to worry about what would happen if he dropped his phone right now. He knew he should get Bluetooth headphones; almost everyone else at the office already had them for tele-conferences. 

“My agent wanted me to be in a comedic role,” Richie said simply, not really elaborating. Eddie read between the lines anyway; Richie had been hinting at wanting to broaden his work, about wanting to go for more serious roles. His management wasn’t so sure.

“You should drop him.” 

“Her,” Richie corrected. “Sexist.” He continued over Eddie's irritated noise and aborted comeback, something like _hilarious,_ you _calling_ me _sexist_. “I don’t know, I think my team is trying to keep my career pretty narrow so that people think of me as like, Richie Tozier, comedian, first and foremost instead of Richie Tozier, guy who’s done a bunch of voice acting and film work and also comedy, sometimes, when he’s not having a meltdown.” 

“Don’t forget the Payless commercial,” Eddie murmured. Richie snorted; he’d already made fun of Eddie a while ago for having seen pretty much all of Richie’s filmography, including some cringeworthy ads from the early 2000s. It had been hard to defend, and Eddie had been thoroughly worked up and embarrassed until Richie had just ruffled his hair and said, _Don’t worry, Eddie. Sometimes I go through your LinkedIn when I can’t sleep. Goldman Sachs in ’06, huh?_

Like Eddie hadn’t thought about what that meant for weeks. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, it’s bullshit. You should do what you want to do.” 

“Maybe you should manage me,” Richie mused. 

“Fuck no,” Eddie said. He wondered what Richie was doing now but thought it too clingy to ask. “But anyway, you’re paying them, right?” 

“I think the legions of grown up frat-bros are the ones really cutting the checks,” Richie said. “Next step,” he continued, in what Eddie figured was probably his agent’s voice; sort of nasal, or, more nasal that Richie’s voice already was, and higher: “How to market being gay to a bunch of homophobes.” He switched back to his normal voice. “I swear, it’s like my audience are the douchebags from The Social Network.” 

“Everyone in that movie is a douchebag.” 

“Go easy on Andrew Garfield. The Armie Hammer types, I meant.” 

“That’s a little classy for you, Rich,” Eddie said, just to hear Richie laugh, and he did. “You think you could pull the Harvard crowd?” 

“I certainly tried, when I was doing college shows in ’98,” Richie said. Eddie thought it was to make him laugh. He did. 

At that moment, he heard Bill’s voice, sleepy and calling Eddie’s name through the apartment. Eddie twisted behind him to peer back through the sliding door. “I gotta go, Bill just woke up.” 

“I’m really getting a picture of what it’s like to be your mistress,” Richie said, sounding amused. 

“Fuck off,” Eddie said, then sighed. “He wants to go to this brewery in SoHo.” 

“Oh, Lord,” Richie said dramatically. “ _That_ brings me back to trying to seduce straight guys. Just ask about the label on the beer or whatever if you don’t know what to say.” 

Eddie choked, not sure what to say to which part of that. He managed to pick one after a second or two: “I’m not trying to _seduce Bill._ ” 

“Your loss,” Richie said, right as Bill wandered into Eddie’s bedroom, rubbing at his eye like a cartoon caricature. 

_Richie_ , Eddie mouthed. Bill’s face split into a sleepy smile. “Tell him I say hi,” he whispered back, as if there was a reason to be quiet after he’d already woken up. 

“Ask him to explain hops to you!” Richie was continuing, but he said it fast, like he knew exactly what Eddie was going to do: roll his eyes and hang up. 

Later, at the brewery, which smelled overwhelmingly like beer but had killer sweet potato fries, Eddie worked up the nerve to ask for Bill’s take on the situation with Bev.. Like Bev, Bill was similarly self absorbed at times; Eddie loved him, but it was just true about him the way it was true that Richie liked attention and Eddie had the tendency to dislike people he’d just met, and wait for them to prove themselves to him, as opposed to doing it the other way around, which was generally agreed upon to be the decent thing to do. That being said, there was still a strong chance that Bill would see what Eddie was getting at anyway, because subtly wasn’t Eddie’s strong suit, and before this year had never openly asked about one of his friend’s love lives. If people wanted him to know things, they told him. Which, he supposed, was how this had gotten started in the first place. 

There was also the strong chance that it could get back to Richie. But – and it was probably because Bill had expertly chosen exactly which beer Eddie would like off of the expansive menu, and he’d had three of them – for once in his life, Eddie had the delirious thought that maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Richie put two and two together. The thought made his ears burn – but still, he made himself ask Bill anyway. 

Bill looked surprised, and then his eyes softened as he lowered his beer. Eddie prepared for the other shoe to drop and tensed until Bill said, sounding touched, “Oh, Eddie, I didn’t know that you noticed.”

Eddie blinked. He was kidding, right? He opened his mouth to say – what? _Did_ you _not notice the looks we were all sending each other every time you and Bev so much as looked at each other all summer?_ But Bill beat him to the punch, sighing wearily. “To be honest, man, it was – it is kind of hard. I don’t know, I have all these feelings still inside me that would probably have gone away if we’d drifted apart or grown up together normally.”

Eddie frowned. “So you don’t…feel that way now?” 

Bill chuckled. Well, he laughed sadly, like it was practiced. Eddie wanted to punch him a little, in that moment. He took a calming breath instead, and did not feel noticeably calmer. “No, not in the same way. Some…stuff happened in Derry,” he added, eyes darting up to Eddie as if this too was some kind of revelation. Eddie tried to count to ten in his head to keep from lunging across the table, and Bill continued. “Which just made it complicated and kind of sad.” 

This was also not what Eddie wanted to hear. He picked at and ate one of the remaining sweet potato fries, frowning harder now. “So you wish you hadn’t done it?” 

Bill shrugged, and reached over and also ate a previously fry. “I don’t know,” he said. “My marriage with Audra needed to end – we’re separated, I guess I should tell you,” he said, and Eddie nodded, summoning up some sympathy from within himself, because this actually was news – or at least, a confirmation of what everyone already knew. “Anyway, I told her about what happened with Bev, and that was the push we needed. So it all turned out for the better. Besides, I think it’s always been a little different for Bev than it was for me.” 

Eddie supposed this made sense, in a way. It didn’t take a psychologist to note that Audra looked a lot like Bev, in a way that Eddie frankly found embarrassing. But again, glass houses. He guessed that like himself, unable to stray from his mother, Bev had been unable to stray from her father. Bill, it seemed, had been unable to stray from redheads. 

_I just hope you didn’t show your wife a picture of Bev,_ Eddie wanted to say for a brief second, but didn’t, because it would be cruel and Bill was still his friend, whom he loved. So he just reached across and placed a hand on Bill’s forearm, because it really did seem like he was having a hard time, and was lonely. It was probably why he had wanted to stay in Eddie’s five hundred square foot apartment instead of a hotel suite that his assistant could have booked for him, with a master bath and a king sized bed and stocked mini-bar. It was hard not to feel touched, in that moment. 

Eddie said, “It will work out,” and he tried to believe it. He did, for Bev and Bill. They would be fine, once they talked it through. He was less hopeful for himself, and now had two anecdotal warnings against what he felt for Richie. In a way, it was what he wanted – some kind of sign to just get over it, to do the adult thing and let it slide by him, the way the years had before now, all dreamy and a little lonely, but not so bad, after all. 

But the problem, of course, was that Eddie had fixated on it enough that he felt that that life – dream-like and lonely and cold – wouldn’t be worth it if he didn’t at least try. The thought of going on minus Richie was not nearly as compelling as the smallest possible chance of going on with Richie in the way he wanted. They way they could both want it. 

Eddie, knowing that he would be the one to drive them home, stopped drinking after their conversation, but let Bill continue. He knew that honesty made people thirsty, and ordered another round of fries. By the time Bill wanted to go, it was later than Eddie would have stayed out – aside from the midnight movies with Bev – but he wasn’t angry or annoyed. It made him feel simply good to know that he could have been a comfort to him – something he hadn’t been, to anyone, in nearly twenty seven years. 

Right before they left, Eddie felt his phone buzz and checked it to see a text from Richie: _i know it’s against my brand to say this but sorry if the Bill joke was too much. feel free to beep beep me as usual._ Alongside this he sent several emojis: a red x, the little man bowing, and the clown emoji, which felt a little too soon, but whatever. 

Eddie sent back a picture of the label on Bill’s beer, and forced himself not to check his phone again for the rest of the night. 

+

Back in March, sometime following close behind Richie’s birthday party, Richie gave Eddie the password to his HBO account, the reason being that Eddie had expressed interest in watching some documentary or other, but complained that he didn’t want to pile on another subscription service. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it; the problem was that he could _._ He knew all too well that bills could slip by him; he liked knowing what he was paying for, and was not quite over finding out that he had unknowingly spent six years paying 14.99 a month for a Crackle subscription, whatever that was. So he’d taken Richie up on the offer, but made him change the password on it. 

“Who says I use the same password for everything?” Richie had said. 

“Me, because I know you do,” Eddie had gritted out, his phone balanced precariously on his coffee maker as he did the dishes. In that moment, he had been glad again that they never FaceTimed; Richie would have given him so much shit for his yellow latex gloves and waterproof apron. Or maybe it was that Eddie did want Richie to give him shit; back then he had been largely confused, most of the time. “And I don’t think I could handle knowing that your password for everything is _yourmom69_.” 

Richie’d laughed. “Dang,” he’d said, “You got me to a t.” And then a few minutes later, after some ambient computer noises, he’d announced, “Ok, changed it. I’ll text you – “ 

Eddie scrambled to shut the water off. “Don’t _text_ it, asshole, what if my phone gets hacked?” 

Richie snorted. “I dunno, what if? Worst case scenario is someone binges Hung and fucks up my algorithms.” 

“Would it really, now,” Eddie said drily. Then for a second, he’d worried if the joke was too brusk a thing to say to Richie, newly out and conspicuously flippant about it. The truth was that Richie thought Eddie was funny, and so he couldn’t help but try to keep up with the version of him that lived in Richie’s head. This sometimes led to saying something that would give Richie pause, and then Eddie would feel like the worst person in the world for that hurt silence, and the whole day afterwards too. 

But Richie had just laughed and dutifully spelled out his username and password for Eddie to write down on a post-it note, after he’d shucked the gloves and left them to dry in the dish drain. The post-it note he now kept on the upper left corner of his home desktop, and every time he looked at it, he knew that it was his fault and his fault alone that it read _U: RTozier_ and _P: yourmom69_. 

In Eddie’s head, the idea of giving someone unfettered access to browse your TV watching history and habits was past the point of vulnerability and stepping dangerously into assailability. This was even before Eddie got hooked on Bachelor in Paradise and the unchanging, twinkling grin of Chris Harrison and his rolled up suit hems; still, he would have rather died than even give Richie five minutes of unsupervised time to peruse his Netflix. 

But of course, the ever present curiosity won out. Richie probably hadn’t had HBO for longer than the past few years, so it wouldn;t be able to make up for the missing time between them. But still; it was a chance to get even the smallest insight into what Richie liked, and best of all, Richie was giving it freely himself, without being asked. 

“Think of it as a reciprocal present,” he’d simply said, when Eddie was hemming and hawing and saying _no_ a lot. He was referring to Eddie’s birthday gift to him; Eddie had tracked down several vintage posters for movies from their childhood years that he remembered Richie having loved. The whole process of this took weeks and cost several hundred dollars between the eBay bidding and the framing; still, he thought the watch history was worth more. 

So, he accepted, telling himself that he didn't have to actually _watch_ anything, and Richie had probably wiped his history, anyway. 

He hadn’t. Eddie was fully expecting to see episode after episode of South Park, possibly interspersed with the Big Bang Theory. Which maybe was a little harsh, but he’d seen Richie’s stand up. And there was some comedy stuff there – most notably, Eddie thought, the version of Dr. Doolittle with Eddie Murphy. But the rest was mostly the Sopranos, some Game of Thrones (although it appeared he’d never gotten past the first season), and Dune. He’d also been watching more than a few Will Smith movies, which made sense to Eddie in the Men in Black sense, but not so much with Independence Day. And, most surprisingly to Eddie, a little bit of hockey. 

So. His taste was fine, if a little boring. But it was still endlessly fascinating to Eddie. He considered making a second, secret account, so that he could watch everything Richie had ever watched that had been logged onto this particular platform. But there weren’t enough hours in the day, and anyway, even Eddie knew that watching all six seasons of the Sopranos again was a waste of time when Richie had probably been using it for accent practice in the first place. 

Talking about it with (or more accurately, making fun of) Richie was a nonstarter, because he could very well then turn around ask Eddie to see his Netflix history, which Eddie could not, under pain of death, share, largely because it was full of recommendations like _Similar to…_ and _Keep watching…_ , all attached in front of Richie’s two Netflix specials, and it had been like that long before Derry, back when Eddie hate-watched them and didn’t understand why he kept coming back. Besides, he didn’t want Richie to laugh and laugh, and then shut down and never share anything with him again. 

Eddie watched the documentary and reported back on it when Richie asked. If Richie thought the radio silence on what was clearly prime chain pulling material was strange, he didn’t mention it. 

+

Towards the beginning of September, Bev appeared to have had several breakthroughs with Ben. Eddie didn’t know what they were, as it was one of the few aspects of her life that she kept fairly private, but he did know that things at least seemed to be going well. She wasn’t calling Ben her boyfriend, but they were all in their forties, so Eddie didn’t fault her for that. 

Things were going so well, in fact, that Bev was going out to visit Ben in his house in Nevada. Eddie was in full support of this, right up until the point where Bev invited him along. 

Eddie pulled a face. “And be a third wheel? No, thanks. You’ll have more fun if I’m not there, anyway.” 

Bev pouted. “Come on, Eds. We’ve tried to get everyone else to come, too, but Bill’s on set in Vancouver, and Mike is in Nicaragua.” 

Eddie did the quick mental math and tried not to betray any emotion besides anticipation in a normal, platonic sense when he said, “Is Richie coming?” 

And that was how he found himself in the dry yet crushing heat outside of the North Las Vegas airport with Bev, who looked well traveled and effortless in a billowy white shirt that caught in the breeze and gave her some enviable ventilation. In contrast, Eddie knew that he was a terrible traveler and was sure he must look as haggard as he felt. 

They had been standing there with their bags for less than five minutes, maybe, when Eddie’s phone buzzed with a text from Richie. _what letter?_ it read, and Eddie was confused until he looked up to see the big lettered signs that demarcated the pick up area. _F_ , he texted back, and it was only another minute or two before Richie was exiting the sliding doors behind them and bringing with him a burst of air conditioning that was short lived and did nothing for the burning that started at the back of Eddie’s neck. 

“Bev!” Richie cried, wrapping her up into a hug and spinning with her for a bit before releasing her. Then, he turned to Eddie, and said, “Eds!” before folding him into his arms. 

It was one of those hugs where one of Eddie’s arms went over Richie’s, and the other went under, creating an infinite-like loop of limbs. Eddie hadn’t touched Richie, hadn’t seen him, even, since he’d gone to LA this past March on a business trip; they’d had a few hours to catch up and Eddie had, as he always had, wanted nothing more than Richie’s eyes on him. That had been the start of it; or rather, that was the moment he’d realized it had started long ago, that it was just the continuation of something that had been planted, deep inside himself, a very long time ago. 

Richie’s armpit was hot on Eddie’s shoulder, and he smelled like stale airplane air and salt and pepper chips, and more than a little like sweat. Eddie allowed himself one moment to hold Richie very tightly and breathe him in, or as much as he could through the fabric of his Ukulele Baby! Live in Concert: Wiggles 2011 World Tour t-shirt. Then they both let go. 

It didn’t take much longer for Ben to show up, in a Jeep of all cars, and immediately jump out to effortlessly set their bags in the trunk, envelop Richie and Eddie in big hugs that included heavy claps on the back, and give Bev a chaste kiss that felt only slightly too sweet for the pick up section at the airport, where almost everyone else would kill for a nap or a drink, and the traffic conductors had been instructed that murder was a viable option for getting people to get a move on from the curb. Eddie actually thought that they were allowed to spend a significant amount of time loading the car; in his life he’d been yelled at by airport traffic conductors more than he could count. But he guessed that looking like Bev or Ben, or standing in close proximity to them, could buy you a lot of leeway. 

In their haste to get on the road, it was not Bev who wound up in the front seat for the three hour drive to Ben’s middle-of-nowhere home, but Eddie, who understood that it was a bit of a dick move that Ben was too nice to say anything about. Eddie had in fact offered to drive; he was feeling antsy after the flight and wanted the steering wheel under his hands. However, Bev had immediately vetoed this citing that Eddie’s driving made her motion sick. This was borderline offensive, but of course what Eddie had latched onto was Richie not saying anything at all. It was strange in the first place that he’d be quiet; it was stranger when Eddie considered that of the four of them, he was the most prone to nausea. 

He was probably just being nice. Or maybe he had noticed that when it had been time to get into the car, Eddie, faced with the prospect of being in the backseat with Richie for an extended period of time, had panicked and shot for the front. 

For the entire drive, Ben hugged the slow side of the speed limit, and it infuriated Eddie in a way that was almost nonsensical. He tried not to care, because it was stupid and he knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help but slide his gaze to the speedometer, over and over again. Richie, sitting behind Eddie, must have noticed, because their eyes met in the side mirror and he snickered. 

Eddie felt the back of his neck heat up and he resolutely looked out of the front windshield for the rest of the car ride. In the backseat, Richie and Bev chattered away, while Ben pointed out landmarks on the side of the road to Eddie, who didn’t much care for the desert; there was something about it that made him perversely claustrophobic, and there were only so many times a giant cluster of rocks could get him excited. But he also knew that once again, this was his fault and his alone. He could have been in the back and arguing with Richie about Justin Long’s voice acting work in Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel; instead, he was in the front and had what should have been Bev’s job of humming appreciatively about sandstone and the fact that Nevada was the leading source of gold production in the world. 

When they finally pulled up to the house, the sun hung at a respectable height in the sky, despite it being nearly seven. Eddie figured it didn’t set until around eight thirty this far south, and hoped that Ben had extra sunscreen, in case he ran out. 

“Holy fuck, Ben,” Richie said, squinting against the sun up at the house. “How the fuck did you build this thing, all the way out here?” 

“It’s a prefab,” Ben explained. “Most of the steel structure was put together in a factory in California. You can build pretty much anywhere, and it’s better for the environment. Cuts down on construction time.” 

Eddie noticed that Richie was not indulging in his favorite party trick – that was, pretending to be interested in something and then falling asleep as soon as an explanation was offered. He scowled at his feet. Maybe Richie had hidden depths. Maybe he cared about the pitfalls of prefabricated non commercial architecture, of which Ben was so earnestly explaining to them now.

Eddie did his best to pay attention as Ben gave the rest of the house tour, if only to keep from snapping at Richie not to touch the glass. What he really wanted was a shower and an ice water, but thought that asking for these would betray that he felt that he needed it. Richie already called him high maintenance, because he believed that they were living in their own horror tinged remake of When Harry Met Sally. In which case, the metaphor could only be too apt: here was Richie, who had already gotten it all out there long ago (not during a road trip to New York, as in the movie, but Derry, last summer) and could live freely as Eddie’s friend; here was Eddie, silently suffering because he couldn’t say what he wanted to say. The only problem with the metaphor was that Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal got together at the end of the movie. Eddie was not as optimistic. 

The house was beautiful, even to Eddie, who didn’t tend to like most contemporary architecture: it had a dog-run type construction, long and low like a ranch house, and faced East. The two wings, right and left, were an equal blend of glass, concrete, and exposed steel; the middle offered an unobstructed view to the mountains behind the house, far off into the distance. 

The amount of visibility made Eddie cringe, used to living packed in among millions of other people in New York, but he supposed that there was no one else out here. The nearest town was a forty minute drive; to Eddie, used to every convenience being at most two blocks away, this felt like unnecessary madness.

There was a pool in the behind the porch, half shaded and intentionally rough cut around the edges so that it resembled a miniature quarry; not like their own back in Derry, but the kind where one could still see the unnatural straight lines where the rock had been hewn away. Eddie smiled at the resemblance anyway. Richie whooped as soon as he saw it, announced that he had to swim immediately, and asked Ben for the keys to the car so that he could get his swimsuit out of his bag.

They made the trek back to the Jeep. As Richie, Eddie and Ben got the bags out of the car, Bev turned back to look at the house and said, “Oh, Ben. It’s like the library.” 

She was referring to the glass hall that had connected the children’s and adult sections at the Derry Public Library. Now that she’d said it, Eddie could see it too. Ben flushed a little and looked down at his feet. Or rather, he did this the best he could while still looking like a soccer player who was the face of Crest: 3D White Whitestrips. Bev tucked herself against his side and smiled up at him, and Eddie, who was at this point certain that he was in fact a gay man, knew that Ben was lucky. He only hoped that Bev didn’t fuck it up. 

They split up to get changed: Ben and Bev were sharing the master on the right side of the house; Richie and Eddie were in the two smaller rooms on the left. The living room separated them, and Richie, standing in the doorway of their shared bathroom while Eddie brushed his teeth, made sure to comment on it. 

“Their room is clear on the other side of the house,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Wonder why.” 

Eddie, who had spent enough time looking at real estate with Myra to grow a basic understanding of why architects did the things they did in concerns to the layout of a house, knew exactly why the set up was the way it was: the house was for a family. He and Richie were staying in the kid’s rooms. 

What he said instead, after spitting in the sink, was “Boom-boom-room,” and then immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, horrified at himself. 

Richie gave him a look of crazed glee in the mirror. Leaning up against the doorframe, still sweaty from the flight in his joggers, with his denim jacket tied loosely around his waist and the pit stains on his stupid t shirt spreading, even now in the cool air of Ben’s home, Eddie felt such a violent flash of lust that he felt helpless to do anything but break their eye contact and duck down to rinse out his mouth. He did so aggressively enough that he thought the dental crown where his back molar had once been, before he’d been stabbed, would come loose. 

When he rose again from the sink, water splashed down the front of his shirt so that it clung to his skin in uneven patches, Richie hadn’t moved, only straightened somewhat. He cleared his throat. “You coming for a swim with me?” 

Eddie busied himself with the hand towel. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit.” 

“You have some black briefs, right?” Richie said, pushing himself off of the doorframe to move back to his room. “Just wear those.”

“How – “ 

Richie called from the hallway, “I was the one who packed up all your stuff in Derry, remember?” 

Eddie did remember, but he hadn’t considered the fact that Richie would be seeing his underwear, or worse, his countless prescription medications with _Edward Kaspbrak_ printed on the side, all half empty. He was a different person than that man, he hoped, but yes, he did still have the black briefs. 

“Fine,” he called back. “But I’m showering first.”

+

When Eddie emerged onto the terrace, showered and half dressed, Richie was quietly floating on his back in the pool, alone in the desert air. This was impressive considering the fact that the pool was carefully regulated fresh water, but Richie was resting on it like it was the Dead Sea. Eddie thought that he must have had a natural buoyancy higher than most. 

A year and a half ago, Eddie would not have used his PTO to spend a long weekend at friends house in the middle of nowhere and swim in an unchlorinated pool in his underwear, but here he was. Richie had his eyes closed; without his glasses, he looked different. It wasn’t unlike comparing two different pieces of furniture from the same painted set; it was Richie still, but not in a way that Eddie knew him. He must have heard the slap of Eddie’s feet against the smooth concrete leading up to the pool; nevertheless his eyes didn’t open as Eddie slipped into the water.

Eddie, at the point of furiously jacking off to Richie’s pit stains in the shower, tried not to look at Richie’s chest or his feet, sticking up towards the cooling Nevada sky. It was difficult, especially when Richie was lying prone like this, as if he were some sort of offering on the surface of the water that Eddie had sunk up to his neck in. 

The fact that he could feel this way about a man who had Akbar and Jeff patterned swim shorts was almost too much for Eddie to believe. But the unvarnished truth was that he did. 

It was quiet for a moment, until Richie suddenly thrashed, sending a huge wave of water towards Eddie that left him sputtering. 

Eddie, who had been glad that there was an opacity to the water lent by the dark stone finish of the pool, felt himself surge forward to splash Richie back. He’d had designs of keeping his chest covered, sensitive of the nudity and sensitive of the scar; all of this was gone in the face of Richie, as it always was. Around Richie he was constantly caught between trying to be someone he was not to impress him or make him laugh, and realizing that Richie, by his mere presence alone, forced Eddie to be who he was. 

Growing up, Richie and Eddie had always ‘fought’ in pools: seeing who could throw each other the farthest, who could flip the other the fastest. Once they’d seen the Karate Kid, there’d been an element of attempted martial art thrown in the mix. This was like that: Eddie, in the throes of Richie’s hands on him and the muscle memory of trying to beat the shit out of him, allowed himself to let loose and laugh with Richie, the way they used to when they were young and nothing else mattered but the day at hand. 

It wasn’t until Bev and Ben showed up with lemonade that he stopped trying to ostensibly drown Richie. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Bev said drily. 

Richie, who’d had his hands on Eddie’s shoulders as if to shove him back under when he was unaware, stilled, then removed them and laughed, making his way to the pool edge with a hand outstretched. “Keeping up with Señor Eduardo leaves on parched,” he said, turning back to Eddie and raising the glass Bev had pressed into his waiting hand towards him. 

Eddie, sinking down low again and crossing his hands across his chest, said, “It’s getting cold.” He’d been so caught up that he’d barely noticed the sun’s slow descent towards the far off rock formations that formed a sort of skyline. 

Ben peered up at the sky, where some stars were just starting to come out, twinkling against the horizon. “The temperature really drops this time of night. You’ll have about a half an hour before it gets too chilly.” He sipped at his drink. “I’m gonna start dinner, you three can chill out here. Just let me know if you want refills.”

Eddie started for the steps of the pool. “I’ll help.” 

He thought Richie’s gaze followed him as he clambered awkwardly out of the water, but then Bev peeled off her sun dress, not unlike the day she’d swum with them at the quarry, and Richie smiled up at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

+

After Eddie showered, and Richie showered too, they ate a late dinner of homemade pizza that Ben had made from scratch and baked in his outdoor pizza oven. Richie and Eddie had nudged each other in disbelief when they saw it, while Bev looked dreamily on. It was strange – the pizza was of course better than anything they had ordered in Derry (Eddie was still a loyal New Yorker and staunchly refused to compare Ben’s cooking to what could be found in the city) but it reminded Eddie of the movie nights he, Mike, Ben and Richie had in early high school. It felt so far and so near now, sitting in a glass castle, down a friend and thirty years out. But the memory was still good, even with everything that surrounded it. 

They ate in front of the TV, though, the way they had done when they were fifteen. Bachelor in Paradise had been over for a week, or so Eddie thought, but when Bev informed him sweetly that there was a reunion episode and yes, they would be watching with Ben and Richie, Eddie started looking for the exits. And then he remembered, as so many in this part of the world must have remembered, that there was nowhere to go besides the expanse of desert, and no civilization that he could reach without a car before getting lost and dying of thirst or hunger or wild animals.

So that was how he found himself perched on the edge of the couch with Bev, watching intently as Ben and Richie murmured in confusion on the other side of the sectional, occasionally punctuated with Richie laughing when Eddie and Bev rolled their eyes in unison, or shook their heads at the TV. Eddie wanted to edit himself, but found that he was having too much fun to do so. Ben didn’t have much alcohol in the house, which Eddie was grateful for, lest he do something stupid. 

“This shit’s crazy,” Richie said, sauce on his chin and gesturing up at Chris Harrison, huge on Ben’s flatscreen. “He’s like, deliberately stirring the pot.” 

“Of course he is,” Bev said, watching a contestant break down in tears backstage. “It’s what makes good TV. Hey, Rich, you ever thought of hosting a tv show?”

Eddie twisted to look back at Richie, who shrugged. Eddie remembered their conversation on his balcony, a few weeks ago now, and thought that he wouldn’t, at least not for something like this. Maybe for something nicer, like Bake-Off, where he could comfort contestants if their frosting split and make dumb jokes and show the world that he was at heart, one of the kindest people Eddie knew.

“That Welles guy seemed pretty hot,” was what Richie said, and Eddie rolled his eyes. “I was a bartender for like six years, I could do that job.” 

Bev shut the TV off right before it was announced who the next Bachelor would be, and dragged Richie outside for a smoke break. As far as Eddie could tell, he had quit several years ago, but liked the social element of it. Eddie thought it was a demonstration of his strength to sit out there on Ben’s front steps, knees curled to his chest while Bev smoked above him. Her cigarette was like a firefly in the dark, the light of it brushing strands of her hair into the fiery red it used to be when they were kids, before it had faded with the years. 

When Eddie glanced over, Ben was watching them too. Eddie hoped that his expression wasn’t the mirror of Eddie’s own: soft and open and ultimately, stupidly, in love. But he knew himself well enough to know that he’d never been good at fixing his face. It simply was what it was.

By the time Richie and Bev made their way back inside, Eddie and Ben had made work of the dishes and the leftovers and were now putting the kettle on for tea. Ben had a real kettle, not an electric one, and Richie amused himself greatly by trying to match the tone of its whistle, until Bev hopped up on her tip toes and wrapped her hands around his throat, and his shrieks dissolved into giggles. 

It was late at that point and everyone, even Richie, was tired and ready for bed. Tea fixed and steeping (sleepytime for Richie and Ben, chamomile for Eddie, peppermint for Bev) they each wandered off to get ready for bed. 

Alone in his room, on his back and with his hands folded over his stomach, Eddie allowed himself some time to think before he tried to sleep. One whole wall of the room was glass, and if Eddie turned onto his side, he could stare out at the midnight landscape for miles and miles. The moon was so bright out here that the quality of the light was that of very early morning; Ben had even provided eye masks if it proved to be too bright to sleep. Eddie, shivering slightly under his blanket, thought that he should maybe just install curtains. 

He hoped that on the other side of the house, Bev and Ben were curled around each other, maybe looking deeply into each other’s eyes. Or maybe, they were reading their own separate books with their own his and hers floor lamps. Eddie couldn't say he was lonely here - he knew his friends were all in the house, which had always been a comfort to him when he was a child at sleepovers, and hadn’t changed, even now that he was middle aged. But still – he imagined, as he so often did, what it would be like if he and Richie could be the ones reading from their own separate books before going to bed, with their own his and his lamps. Maybe one of them would read a funny passage and share it aloud with the other. And then they’d turn the lights out at the same time, and if Eddie woke in the middle of the night, as he so often did, he would have Richie’s calming breaths to lull him back to sleep. 

The problem, obviously, was that Richie had had those feelings for Eddie in middle school, which was arguably the worst time in someone’s life even if they hadn’t been almost killed by a monster. For Eddie, they were forty one and it was now. 

But then he thought of Richie’s hands on his shoulders, and his phone calls and texts, and thought that it wouldn’t be so bad to go on like this forever as parallel lines, close but never touching.. Still, he let himself think of his bedtime fantasy, just to give in and give himself something nice for once. He drifted off thinking of this, and what a simple and wonderful existence it would be. 

+

At four in the morning, Eddie woke and knew that he could no longer stand it. He lay in bed for only a minute or two before he got up. The house was quiet and a little cold; the concrete stung underneath his feet as he quietly got up and made his way to Richie’s room. He paused for a second at Richie’s door, and then, hearing nothing but the hum of the air conditioning, somewhere far off, he gently pushed the door open. 

Richie was curled on his side, holding a pillow close to his chest. Eddie paused in the doorway then, giving himself a moment to back out, or wait until morning. And then he made his decision and strode forward as quietly as he could, taking hold of Richie’s shoulder and shaking it with all of the gentleness he had in him. Sometimes Eddie himself awoke startled; he had done this for his entire life after the Summer of 1989. Sometimes he thrashed or scared himself; he did not want to do this to Richie. 

Eddie felt the hum within him grow as Richie woke blearily, but without any violence. He twisted his head over his shoulder to squint at Eddie, and then reached for his glasses on the nightstand. “Eds?” he said when he had rolled to face him and sat up, half question, half statement, and Eddie wanted to kiss his sleep slack mouth and jaw, but forced himself to wait. 

“Richie,” he whispered back. Not a question; only searching. The harsh moonlight painted Richie into silver and grays; deep shadows by his temple and the side of his nose. Everything washed out into black and white. Eddie took a steadying breath. “Richie,” he said again, “I have to talk to you about something.” He paused here; Richie nodded, and he continued. “Remember - remember in Derry? When we were in the car and you said - “

Richie, without moving, appeared to shrink back somewhat. Maybe it was that he had gone tense. Eddie wished more than anything to take the tenseness away from him, and knew that he couldn’t guarantee it but that he could only try. He tried: “You, um, you said that you felt a certain way about me. Back when we were kids.” 

“Are you trying to make me say it?” Richie said weakly. Eddie could tell that he was trying to joke but that it was too late at night; perhaps it was too early in the morning. 

He shook his head. “No, I’m – I’m sorry, it’s the middle of the night. I just had to tell you that, that I can’t stop thinking of you.” 

Richie blinked, and Eddie shook his head again. “I’m sorry, that’s wrong. Well, it’s not wrong, but it’s not the right way to say it. I mean, I,” he searched for the words, and then gave up and had to put it simply. “I want to be with you. Like,” and here he stuttered. It was too big. “I’ve been thinking about you, so much, and I do, I really do. Love you. For a long time now, I think. I- I know it might not be the same for you, and it might be strange for me to say. But I can’t just not say it. And I know, I know when you told me that you, uh, felt that way, you meant a long time ago.” He tried to laugh at himself, the way that Bill had, and found that he couldn’t, not with any real verity. “So it’s okay if that’s...not how you feel. Maybe you didn’t want me to bring it up. I just wanted to tell you.”

Richie looked at him for what felt like a long time, but could have been seconds. Eddie must have been painted in the same shades of gray from the moon, and Richie just looked at him and swallowed. “Eddie, I -“ he started. “I was so drunk that night I couldn’t even tell you that I love you right.” 

Eddie didn’t dare to breathe, just waited for Richie to continue, and he did, shakily. “I do, I do. Not just in middle school, Jesus. I love you now. But I thought - I can’t say it now, it’s been a day. And then it had been a week, and then two. And then it was months and it still felt too crazy, too much to say.” 

“That first night back?” Eddie said with some wonderment, wondering if he had understood it right, and then once again: “After one night?” 

Richie lifted a shoulder and twisted the bedsheet between his hands as if it were a rope. “A night and thirty odd years,” he said. In a sort of _It is what it is._

Eddie swallowed and reached forward so that he could hold Richie’s face between both of his hands. He searched it, eyes back and forth, trying to make sense of what they had said, of what they felt, or maybe he was just trying to take him in. Richie closed his eyes and angled his chin down so that his cheek leaned into the palm of Eddie’s hand, the same palm that Bill had cut into with a shard of Coke-bottle glass twenty eight years ago. The scar had disappeared, but Eddie thought he could feel it there now. Where Richie’s eyelashes fluttered against his skin, he felt the sting of it. Like it was glass, but sweeter. 

“I should have told you sooner,” Eddie said, still marveling at how he could hold something such as this between his two hands, how lucky he was. 

Richie shook his head. “I was okay with it,” he said, eyes still closed, “Just being friends. It was more than enough. It would have been more than enough, for me.”

“I was going fucking crazy,” Eddie said, another moment of vulnerability among the hundreds he had been trying to give to Richie, that day alone, and all of the days before that. “I was gonna lose my mind.” Then he crawled on top of Richie and pushed him back into the pillow so that he could bend at the waist with his thighs on either side of him and kiss him, just like that. 

Richie’s eyes were wide when Eddie rose again, and he laughed a little. “What do you expect from me?” he joked, sounding a little breathless and spread out beneath Eddie. 

“It’s the middle of the night,” Eddie said. “Not too much.” And then he leaned back down. 

They stayed for a while like that, with Eddie atop him. He traced the shell of Richie’s ear with the tip of his fingers while they kissed, and the shape of his eyebrow; Richie hesitantly did the same thing back and Eddie wanted to communicate somehow that it was a gift he was giving, these touches, and Richie didn’t have to do the same. But he was, and the featherlight ghost of Richie’s hands on him left traces on Eddie’s skin that he was sure would still be there in the morning. 

Eddie could have spent forever like this. Eventually, though, he felt the strain of the position on his hips and his knees. “Wanna flip?” he said, but Richie shook his head, his hair tangling against the pillow. 

“Can’t, he murmured. “Not flexible like you.” So Eddie slid off of him and laid down by his side. This too felt intimate, just laying next to him. All those evening phone calls where he laid the phone on the pillow next to him and curled around it to talk to Richie; the months that Eddie was getting divorced, when they had lost touch, until Richie had come out sometime in February and Eddie had reached out to offer his congratulations and it was like a floodgate had been opened – all of that had led to this moment. Now, Richie slowly wrapped his arms around Eddie, like he wasn’t sure that Eddie would like it; Eddie responded by burrowing into the front of his shirt, as if he were trying to crawl under it, and under Richie’s skin, too. He had talked to Richie already that night; now he tried to send him a message with just his skin pressed to his: _I love you, I love you, I love you. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want us to be apart._

It was a little scary, the force of those thoughts, but Eddie thought Richie felt them, because his arms only tightened, and he dropped a kiss to the top of Eddie’s head, and like that they fell asleep. 

+

In the morning, Richie and Ben made breakfast tacos, loaded with sriracha and avocado slices and grated cheddar cheese. Bev nudged her foot at Eddie’s under the table with a knowing smile, and Eddie just ducked his head to hide his own, and curled his foot around her ankle. He and Bev’s individual journeys had been so different and so alike. And now they were here, in the middle of the desert and eating breakfast tacos and drinking good, hot coffee. 

“What do you want to do today?” Bev asked the group, as Ben and Richie brought the rest of the food to the table. Richie slid into the seat next to Eddie and took his hand, open and waiting on the table top. 

“Bonfire, maybe, when it gets dark,” Ben said. 

“Go swimming,” Richie said. “Call Mikey and Bill.” 

Eddie looked over Richie’s shoulder, towards the mountains a few miles away. “Go driving,” he said consideringly. “Maybe a state park?”

Ben nodded, and listed several that were a drive away. Eddie listened, nodding, and felt Richie’s foot find his and Bev’s under the table. And then Ben’s was there, too, and it was so odd and sweet that Ben stopped talking to laugh. To think that Eddie could be here, playing footsie under the table with his friends was strange, but in a way it was the good kind of strange that came with choosing the people you wanted to be with, forever. 

Richie lifted Eddie’s hand, twined with his own, to press a kiss to the back of it. Eddie moved his thumb to trace the shape of one of his fingernails, too happy to be nervous about public affection. 

“That all sounds great, Ben,” Richie said at last. “As long as you let Eddie drive.” 

Bev groaned at that, but Richie caught Eddie’s eye and grinned wide, as if to say _See? This is what I’ll give you today. This is what I’ll give you forever._

Eddie grinned back.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually know what happens in season four (the season Eddie and Bev are watching) besides a couple people that are on it and I didn't want to spoil myself so that's that on the level of detail there. plus realistically i didn't want to bore people lol. 
> 
> Didn't manage to fit it in, but Richie is an avid Survivor fan, and that's what he and Bill mostly talk about on their brunch dates. Ben probably likes the actual Bachelor/Bachelorette. Eddie doesn't actually like bake-off that much. Obviously he likes cutthroat kitchen tho. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think! I also made an IT twitter, it's basically empty but I wanna be where the people are lol [talk to me here!](https://twitter.com/jadedpearl1)


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